


The Pieces of Me

by Cocopops1995



Series: Are We All Lost Stars (Shiro Week 2017) [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Past Torture, Mentions of past injury, Nightmares, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, blackpaladinweek, day 3: break/mend, hunk is captain obvious, shiro's galra arm is broken, shiroweek2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cocopops1995/pseuds/Cocopops1995
Summary: "Well, there's no easy way to say this, Shiro. Your arm is well and truly broken."





	The Pieces of Me

“Oh, man.” Hunk breathes, eyes sweeping over the carnage on the table before him, “That wild yupper did not like your arm.”

Shiro shrugs and then winces as the movement pulls at the very tender flesh where the Galra arm is fused to his upper bicep. “Or you could say that it liked it very much. As a chew toy.” 

Hunk hums distractedly has he gently picks the arm up to more carefully examine the mangled wrist. Shiro bites back a hiss of pain as it pulls again at the swollen flesh on his upper arm. The pod may have healed all his other injuries, but that part of his arm always stayed extra sensitive after a fight. Being swung around by the arm as a huge alien dog chewed it to pieces only made the lingering sensitivity worse. 

“Well,” Hunk says after carefully laying the arm back down again, “There’s no easy way to say this, Shiro. Your arm is well and truly broken.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t say.”

Hunk sighs, “What I mean is that I don’t think Pidge and I can fix this. We’ll have to get her opinion on it, and maybe Coran’s too, but I think we’re going to have to remove what we can and then rebuild the arm from scratch.”

Shiro frowns, “Can you do that?”

“What? Build you a new, better arm? Of course I can! And Pidge will help, so it’ll be the most awesome prosthetic ever! Even better than this was!”

Shiro smiles at his enthusiasm. “I have no doubt that whatever you two come up with would be amazing. I meant can you actually take this one off? Hasn’t one of the problems with taking it off always been that we’re not sure how it’s wired to my brain?”

Hunk’s face falls a little. “Well, yeah. But we don’t really have much of a choice now. We’ll just have to do as many scans as we can and work very slowly and carefully.” he shrugs, “Depending on how damaged it’s interior is, we might even just rebuild the exterior and leave all the wiring as it is.”

Shiro nods, but is still uneasy at the idea of having the arm removed and rebuilt. 

Hunk notices and reaches out to squeeze his flesh hand. “We’ll be super careful, Shiro.” he says, completely sincere. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. Or us.” he adds with a wink.

His words don’t put Shiro at completely at ease, but they help, so he smiles at Hunk and thanks him. 

He holds out hope that Pidge and Coran will have more positive opinions about fixing the arm, but both of them agree that it’s completely unsalvageable and will have to be rebuild. Their pronouncements settle like rocks in Shiro’s stomach.

He doesn’t understand why it bothers him so much. He should be happy that he’s finally getting rid of the arm. Relieved even. He hates the arm. So why does having it replaced by something built by hands he knows and trusts fill him with so much dread? 

The answer comes that night when his dreams show him exactly how he received the Galra arm in the first place. The memory is gruesome, filled with excruciating pain and his own screams. He wakes choking on his own screams and drenched in sweat. He stares down at the arm, wrapped in bandages and the equivalent of space duct tape to keep it from completely falling apart until Hunk, Pidge, and Coran are ready to work on it, and the dread of having it removed and replaced grows tenfold. 

A week later, though, the three of them prove that all of his fears were absolutely unnecessary (of course he’d known they were, his brain stupid brain just hadn’t been able to accept it.)

He wakes to find a gleaming new completely black arm that glows brilliant blue when activated. It’s so much more elegant looking than the Galra one had been, and - amazingly - seems to respond even better than the Galra one had. The biggest difference Shiro notices, though, is that the ever constant pain where the arm had been grafted onto his arm has completely disappeared. 

He glances down and feels the colour drain from his face as he notices that this new one comes up higher that the previous one had.

Coran cuts his panicked thoughts off before they can even begin to spiral.

“Don’t fret, Number 1! What’s left of your arm is still there, I assure you! This extra part here is purely there for medical reasons. It will aid with blood circulation in your arm, keeping any swelling under control, and it will prevents any discomfort caused by chafing and other external factors.” Coran tells him, and then falls into a more detailed explanation about how it works. 

Once he’s done, Pidge and Hunk excitedly tell him about all the new features they’d built into it. They go way too fast for him to really take in everything, and he’s going to have to ask them to go everything with him at a much slower pace sometime later. 

For now, though, the relief finally settles in. He’s finally rid of the weapon the Galra had forced on him. In its place he has a beautiful new prosthetic arm, lovingly built for him by people who were more concerned with his needs and comfort than the destructive potential. 

For the first time in over a week, Shiro smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Like my work? Please consider [buying me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/W7W3KRCZ) :)


End file.
